"Charles de Lint - Someplace To Be Flying" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Lint Charles)

His hand rose to touch his shoulder again and his fingers came away
tacky with the drying blood. But the wound was still only a puckered
scar. The pain was still gone. He'd be ready to believe he'd imagined
the whole thing if it weren't for the blood on his shirt, the dead man
lying at his feet.
Straightening up, he finally walked around the corpse, crossing the
pavement to join the woman he'd stopped to help. She sat on the
pavement, back against the brick wall behind her, the lights of the cab
holding her like a spotlight. He saw the same dazed expression in her
features that he knew were on his own. She looked up at his approach,
gaze focusing on him.
"You okay?" he asked.
"I don't know. . . ." She looked down the alley in the direction that
the girls had taken. "She just took the pain away. I can hardly hold on
to the memory of it . . . of the man . . . hitting me. . . ." Her gaze
returned to Hank. "You know how when you're a kid, your mother
would kiss a scrape and you'd kind of forget about how it hurt?"
Hank didn't, but he nodded anyway.
"Except this really worked," the woman said.
Hank looked at the blood on his hand. "They were angels."
"I guess. . . ."
She had short brown hair and was holding a pair of fashionable
glasses with round tortoiseshell frames. One of the lenses was broken.
Attractive, late twenties to early thirties, and definitely uptown. Well
dressed. Low-heeled shoes, a knee-length black skirt with a pale rose
silk jacket, a white shirt underneath. After tonight the outfit was going
to need dry-cleaning.
Secretary, he decided, or some kind of businesswoman. A citizen,
as out of place here as he'd be in the kinds of places where people had a
life on paper and paid taxes. Met her Mr. Goodbar in some club tonight
and things just went downhill from there. Or maybe she was working,
he thought, as he noticed the camera bag lying in some trash a few
paces away.
He rinsed his hand in a puddle, wiped it clean on his jeans. Then he
gave her a hand up and fetched the bag for her. It was heavy.
"You a photographer?" he asked.
 She nodded and introduced herself. "Lily Carson. Freelance."
Hank smiled. He was freelance, too, but it wasn't at all the same
kind of thing. She probably had business cards and everything.
"I'm Joey Bennett," he said, shaking the offered hand. They might
have gone through an amazing experience together, but old habits were
hard to shake. Joey Bennett was the name that went with the I.D. he
was carrying tonight; Hank Walker didn't exist on paper. Not anymore.
"You need a lift somewhere?"
Her gaze traveled to the corpse. "We should call the police."
She was taking this well. He reached up and touched his shoulder.
Though he wasn't exactly stressing out over it either. Those girls had
done more than take away her bruises and the hole in his shoulder.
"You can call them," he said, "but I'm not sticking around."
When she gave him a surprised look, he nodded toward the Chev.